Letters

Selfishness

Dear Nathaniel,

I know.

            I know many things: for one, I don't even deserve for you to be opening this letter. You have the complete right to burn this letter as soon as you see my name scribbled on the envelope. I know you won't, though. I know because you are you; forgiving, loyal, understand and completely selfless. I don't know where you could have learned it from, certainly not from me, but you did.

            I also know that you're also thinking how I, first off, have the audacity to write to you and secondly, why I would even be doing it. I know that if you really knew the reason why I was writing this letter you'd be angry at me, so I'm saving that for the end. For now, I need you to read, and I need you to know what haunts me at night and will continue to haunt me no matter how much I bargain with God for forgiveness and a moment of peace.

            I guess to begin, we have to backtrack a good twenty years.

            I was nineteen when my parents kicked me out of the house, I think you already know about that. You may have caught onto it through my rambles from time to time. I was left on the streets with no money, no job, no home and no education (I had dropped out of high school- a big reason I was kicked out). I began to live with my friend Hannah- I'm not sure if you remember her, she stopped coming around years ago- as I searched for a job. No offers were coming up- no employers were too fond that I never graduated high school- and I was frustrated. To relax me, Hannah took me out for some drinks. There, I met Michael.

            Michael and I instantly connected. We talked and we continued to talk that night even long after Hannah had left to go home. Michael and I exchanged numbers and soon we were talking every day. It was one of those stupid young loves- when I would wait by the phone and anticipate his reply before choosing mine carefully. Twenty years later and I still remember the butterflies I would get every time I saw him.

            I fell in love with him, Nathaniel, I really did.

            I'm not going to lie- you weren't planned. Not even the least bit. Michael and I had been seeing each other for a little over a year when I got pregnant with you. Michael's face had turned stoic when he found out, but soon enough he had promised me that he'd stay and take care of you with me. And I believed him- I mean, of course I did. I was in love with him.

            Needless to say, Michael didn't stay.

            He left right before you were born. Hannah called him when I was in labour, and he just never picked up. Then when you came out looking just like your father? I hated you for it. I hated every fibre of your being.

            Michael's leaving was hard on me- he may have just been the first man I loved and I didn't know how to deal with the heartbreak that he left upon me. I began to drink and drink and drink. I still remember four-years-old you would ask me why I was walking so funny, why my breath smelled so bad and that I wasn't saying the word 'seriously' right. You were so damn innocent back then that it brings me to tears to think about how that innocence had been torn out of your hands by the time you were eight. Eight- by the time I was drinking a strong glass of whiskey in the mornings, doing drugs every night and finishing it off with a new man to wake up with in the morning. You hated it, I know you did.

            Things were just getting out of hand. I had a job at a bar back then, barely holding onto it, but I wasting all the money on drugs and alcohol. When you got sick, I wouldn't get you medicine until necessary from the lack of money. The groceries in the fridge were always at a possible minimum. I was a disgusting mother, still am. I watched your hollowed cheeks and felt your ribs through your layer of skin and didn't care. I didn't care when you cried at ten and begged me to stop and I didn't care when you tried to stand up for me to the man who wanted money from me and got a bruise out of it.